


Fear Death by Water

by sutlers



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-26
Updated: 2011-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:08:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sutlers/pseuds/sutlers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things don't really start to go to hell until the next morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear Death by Water

**Author's Note:**

> Remember when I was like, I'm going to write one sex pollen fic! For one fandom! And get it out of my system forever! But then [this happened](http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/806.html?thread=29222#t29222) and I turned out to be a fucking liar.

Hank's laboratory has always reminded Charles of nothing more than a controlled disaster area, like the aftermath of a very small, very disciplined tornado. He smiles when he opens the door, and smiles wider when he sees Erik leaning on one of the lab tables across from Hank, saying something that Charles can't make out at this distance. His smile fades as he takes in the defensive lift of Hank's shoulders.

He clears his throat and Hank twitches, but Erik only sweeps his gaze up languidly.

"Hello, Hank," Charles says. "Erik."

"Charles," Erik says.

"How is your progress, Hank?" Charles steps into the space next to Erik and Erik shifts to accommodate him. Hank lifts a corner of his mouth, strained.

"Good," Hank says. "Excellent. I think I've finally managed to figure out how to make this material fireproof." He looks down. "And," he adds in afterthought, "not make anyone wearing it break out in second-degree chemical burns."

Charles laughs, surprised. "That is excellent." Hank's smile relaxes into something more genuine. "Don't—" Charles says, at the same time that Erik says,

"What—"

But they're both cut off by a small _pop_ behind them. Charles feels cool liquid running down the back of his neck.

"What on _Earth_ ," he starts, turning. Glass crinkles under his shoes. The table behind him is sprinkled with a pale, viscous substance—the same, he assumes, that is dripping off his hair and down the back of his jacket. Erik looks comically pole-axed, splattered all up one side. Hank is clean; it didn't reach his side of the table.

"Oh, no," Hank wails. "I'm so sorry, that was, it was supposed to be—"

Erik shakes his hand, flinging some drops to the floor, and holds it up, cutting Hank off. "Is it dangerous?"

" _No,_ " Hank says. "It's just the base of—it was supposed to be _inert_ , maybe the heat—"

After the initial start, Charles feels another bubble of laughter rising. He swallows it down and says, "It's all right, Hank, we'll just go wash this off, shall we?"

Erik coughs and says dryly: "I don't know, Charles, I think it's a good look for you," reaching over and raking his fingers through the wet part of Charles' hair, making it stand on end. Charles shivers.

"I appreciate the thought, Erik. I'll call someone to help clean this up. Oh, and—" Charles turns, because he'd almost forgotten the reason he came up here, and nearly runs straight into Erik; Erik does a funny sideways hop-step to keep from smacking into him. "Don't forget, dinner is in an hour. I don't want you running on chemical fumes."

"Okay," Hank says, miserably.

"No harm done, Hank."

"We'll see if that's still your line when you're sprouting radioactive boils," Erik mutters under his breath as they reach the door, and Charles gives into the urge to shove him, grinning.

 

***

He feels slightly guilty, afterwards; he ought to have asked what Hank was talking about with Erik. He thinks he probably knows. But Hank should have the opportunity to work those problems out for himself: he is an exceptional boy, with an exceptional mind. Charles has faith in him.

 

***

Dinner passes without incident. Charles runs into Erik again in the hallway leading to the dining room and spreads his hands. "No boils," he says.

"Always the optimist." Erik's hair is still damp, like Charles' own, though he's combed it back into his usual style. A few stray strands curve over the shell of Erik's ear and when Charles takes a breath he realizes he can _smell_ him, a mixture of soap and humidity and cologne.

"You say that like it's an affliction," Charles says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I prefer to be pleasantly surprised on occasion rather than disappointed consistently," Erik says. They take their seats and the rest of the household trickles in after; Hank attempts to apologize again but Charles waves him off, steering the conversation toward the day's accomplishments instead. He meets Erik's eyes over the table as Hank is explaining the tests he'll be using to determine whether the fireproofing worked to Alex and smiles. Erik blinks, like he's been startled out of some kind of contemplation, and lifts an eyebrow. Charles has the beginnings of a minor headache when he retires that night, begging off their customary game of chess, but things don't really start to go to hell until the next morning.

 

***

Charles knows there are ways he could be better, things he could be making more of an effort to understand. Raven, for example: but he has promised to stay out of her thoughts. Denied this, he knows, he has trouble comprehending the nature of her preoccupation with her mutation, with her _body_ —his own body is something of an afterthought, just a vehicle for his mind. This doesn't mean he has divorced himself from it—he takes care of himself, eats well, has a long run every morning before breakfast, tries to minimize his vices. He likes sex, likes the soft yield of another body beneath his, but he's never been desperate for it. He's never understood how it can ruin a man.

 

***

He wakes up and his headache is worse instead of gone, reminiscent of the cheap-liquor hangovers from his university days. He's _hot_ , having kicked off all his bedclothes during the night, and when he squints at himself in the mirror he looks flushed and glazed. He hopes he's not coming down with something, but part of him is already resigned: he feels awful, heavy, suffocated. Filling a glass of water, he swallows two paracetamol.

He washes up by splashing his face and neck with cool water, then runs wet fingers over his scalp in an attempt to tame his hair. It's a familiar ritual, automatic, but this morning he thinks of Erik's fingers on the back of his head, going the wrong way. He loses a small slice of time; when he comes back to himself the cold breeze from the bathroom window has caused the skin on his bare chest to tighten and break out in gooseflesh.

 _Coming down with something_ , he thinks grimly, and walks back out of the bathroom to get dressed.

Clothes are terrible; they intensify the feeling of suffocation and he's tempted to give it up as a lost cause and stay in bed for the rest of the day. But people will worry, Raven and—Erik, so he pushes his door open and makes his way down the hall.

He finds Moira in the kitchen, making a cup of coffee. She looks at him and sets the cup down in front of him instead.

"Is it all that bad, love?" he asks, curling his fingers around the porcelain.

"You look like someone's run you over," she says. "You need to stop trying to drink Erik under the table; he's half again your size."

"Charles likes playing the losing game," Erik rumbles from the entryway before Charles can correct her.

"Untrue," Charles says. He's almost certain that Moira asks Erik if he would like a cup of coffee as well, but it is getting hard to hear over the sudden rushing in his ears. He pushes his chair away from the table and puts his head between his knees, breathing shallowly until the vertigo passes.

"—rles. _Charles_ ," Erik says sharply. Someone is plucking at his shoulders— _that's Erik,_ Charles thinks, _kneeling on the floor in front of me._ The back of Erik's hand comes up to feel Charles' forehead, then his cheek.

"I'm just coming down with a cold or something," Charles says. Involuntarily, he turns his face into the hand.

"I'm going to murder that little gormless shit," Erik murmurs. Charles notes that Erik's own face is about as red as Charles' feels, and he parts his lips to press a kiss against Erik's knuckles.

 

***

One thing that Charles is necessarily excellent at is compartmentalizing. He would have gone insane a long time ago if he hadn't learned to separate out the voices, to put them all away. He puts pieces of himself away as well— _control_ is the key, order, a neatly segmented life. People can mistake this sort of disciple for heartlessness but that couldn't be further from the truth: Charles cares about everyone he meets, he can't not, but this is the way for him to take a potentially fathomless depth of feeling and turn it into something manageable.

It isn't always easy. People are unpredictable by nature; some can evoke reactions in Charles that he doesn't expect, that he has no way to prepare for. Erik was one, a roiling mess of anger and pain and ashy grief, a beautiful, subtle mind, sharp as a knife. When they'd met, Erik had been drowning, and Charles had jumped in after him with barely a thought and now Charles is—

 

***

Drowning. That's what this is like, like he has the weight of the ocean pressing against his chest. His limbs are heavy and he's having an extraordinarily difficult time getting them to do what he wants. Erik pulls away when Moira returns, Hank in tow, and Charles struggles for breath. He makes an attempt to pull himself back together when Hank lifts his arm onto the table and pushes his sleeve back, wiping the inside of his elbow with iodine.

"I only have two-thirds of an M.D.," Hank babbles. "What if—"

"You'll do fine," Charles says. Hank nods, once, then slides the needle into Charles' vein. He repeats the process with Erik on the other side of the table and snaps the two vials of blood into a carrying case.

"Give me an hour," Hank says, and then he's gone.

"I think I may have that lie-in after all," Charles says. He lurches to his feet and waves Moira's offer of help away.

His room is blessedly dark and smells only like himself but it's still hot—Charles is hot, so he strips off his shirt and toes off his shoes and undoes his pants until he's standing there in just his underwear, chest heaving and head pounding, cock straining against the thin material of his briefs. He climbs gingerly into bed and tries to sort out the barrage of sensation beating against his floodwalls.

"So much for inert," Erik says after what feels like hours but is probably only a few minutes.

"I locked that door," Charles says without opening his eyes.

"You did," Erik acknowledges. "How do you—feel?"

"I have a headache."

Erik grunts. Charles chances a look: Erik is sprawled out on the armchair next to the bed like he's been poured into it, head propped against one hand and breath coming in shallow, measured pants. Only the top two buttons of his shirt are undone but it's easy enough to see the flush creeping up his neck and Charles is swamped by the desire to put his mouth there, open against the hollow of Erik's throat like it had been open against his scarred knuckles.

"Is that all?" Erik asks.

"No," Charles says.

 

***

The night in Virginia is cool, and the steady, quiet buzz of insect life fills Charles' ears as he steps out onto the concrete. _I'm surprised you've managed to stay this long_ , he hears himself say. That was good, he thinks, appropriately casual, suppressing that flare of wild urgency and his sense of self-preservation clanging the alarm bell.

 

***

"I'm sorry," Erik says, shifting in the chair. "We should probably avoid each other. I'll go."

"I don't want you to leave," Charles says. He licks his swollen lips, knowing it's not a confession he should be making. The mattress he is lying on dips.

Wordlessly, Erik presses his fingers against Charles' temples in sweeping, circular movements. The pain recedes, replaced by a dizzying pulse, not unlike being drunk. Charles can feel the body heat radiating from Erik's thigh, can smell him, his cologne and something more basic. There is a wrinkle of concentration between Erik's eyebrows.

"If you keep doing that I'm going to come," Charles says, trying to inject his voice with something approaching steadiness. Erik groans and the mattress shifts again; this time Erik's hand brushes against the inside of Charles' thigh and cups between his legs. Charles barely has time to gulp a lungful of air before he does come, smashed to pieces and shaking. He vaguely registers Erik's head snapping back and his hips snapping forward, Erik mouthing a litany of words that are no more than a whistle of air while the metal frame of the mirror on Charles' dresser twists and shatters the glass it contains.

"I felt that," Erik mumbles against Charles' shoulder.

"Let's pray you were the only one," Charles says, and it is that flicker of humor he feels that undoes him, the twitch of Erik's lips against his skin.

"I need to," Erik says, pushing off the bed to fumble at the front of his trousers. He's still visibly hard, despite the growing wet stain, and Charles' lust surges up again in a wave. "I need to fuck you, I need to—"

"Yes," Charles says, pushing at his briefs until he's entirely naked, helping Erik with his shirt until there's nothing but vast expanses of exposed skin between them. Erik looks at him, propped up on his palms between the spread of Charles' legs, and Charles can _hear_ how much he wants it, feels the roar of desire tempered with hot flashes of guilt and shame. It's a testament to the kind of man Erik is that none of this is visible on his face.

"Please," Charles says, pulling Erik's face to his, pressing their lips together. They stay like that for long seconds. _Should have done this before_ flits through Charles' mind, followed closely by _shouldn't be doing this at all_ right before Erik opens his mouth and the last tenuous threads of Charles' control snap.

There's nothing left of him then, just heat and skin and wet, completely overwhelmed by Erik's body around him and Erik's cock splitting him open on nothing but sweat and spit and come. Even the pain is just a part of it, and Charles urges Erik on with one hand yanking at Erik's hair and the other one squeezing his arm, hard enough to bruise. Erik fucks in short, rough bursts, jaw slack, composure gone, chest heaving like he can't get enough air.

 

***

How does a man mark the moment he steps onto the path of ruination?

 

***

The fever fizzles away as the sweat dries on their bodies. Erik lies still and watchful; Charles recognizes it for what it is, feels them both try to rebuild the wreckage of their defenses. Hank's voice in his head is an unwelcome shock.

 _Professor, I'm sorry, I can't figure out what it is—_

 _It's fine_ , Charles sends back. _It's passing_. "Erik," out loud, not knowing what he's going to say next until he does: "Stay a while." He closes his mouth and slides his hand over the planes of Erik's back.

"A while," Erik agrees.


End file.
